5 Common Mistakes to Avoid with Your Social Media Business Account

#1 Not defining goals

Not defining a clear goal for social media is one of the most common mistakes small businesses make with their social media marketing. All social media platforms are tools, but you are not going to use those tools effectively unless you know what you are trying to achieve.

Social media marketing can have different meanings for different businesses at different stages.

• Increase brand awareness
• Lead generation
• Having online presence
• Selling products directly from social medias
• Driving traffic to your website
• Building community around your brand
• Increasing mentions on press
• Giving better customer service

Depending on your goals for social media, you might have a completely different social media strategy.

The type of contents you post, how often you post and which platform you are going to use depends on what you are looking to achieve. This also affects the metrics you are going to measure. For one business increase in number of social media followers might be the goal but for another business this may not matter at all.

#2 Not knowing the target audience

Knowing your target audience is critical before defining your social media strategy. If you know who you are speaking to then you can tailor your language to become most effective. The types of content you are going to post depends on age, location, gender, set of values, likes and dislikes and more.

Also you should define the platforms you are going to post on based on your target audience

For example

• More urban residents use Instagram than their suburban peers.
• The most active instagram users are between 18 and 29.
• The United States is the largest Instagram market.

#4 Not asking questions and feedbacks from your audience

Social media is a great way to send your message out, but it also should be used to hear from your customers/audience, it should open a two way communication. Social media is a great place to ask questions and get feedback from those who care about your brand.

Many successful brands like Glossier have been getting help from their audience to even develop their new products. In case of Glossier, they launched the Milky Jelly Cleanser based on the feedbacks and the data they gathered from their fans.

#5 Not tracking the results properly

While many businesses watch their data metrics on each platform, they might forget to look at the bigger picture. To see how their metric is changing over a longer period of time, whether they are getting closer to their social media goals and how it’s impacting other marketing metrics and goals.

Tracking results also gives you the opportunity to spot trends within your audience, if there is a specific date and time that engagement or sales increase.